The Pacific Coast for the first time in 10 months

Monteverde to Miguel San AntonioWe were set for a long day traveling from the mountains in Monteverde to the pacific coast via San Jose (anywhere in Costa Rica seems you have to go via San Jose) - we would be traveling back along the road that took 3 hours to travel 35kms on the way up. Also unfortunately there were yet more heavy Pacific storms and rain the night before and this had quite an impact on our journey. We first had an inkling that something was not going to plan when our bus attempted a 23-point turn on the narrow mountain road. Then much to our surprise, rather than going back to where we started, we continued down the mountain road backwards !! All became clear 20 minutes later when we came to a queue of trucks backed up to a landslide.

To cut a long story short we ended up traversing by foot through the jungle around the landslide, reconnecting with the road and waiting for a different bus from San Jose to come pick us up - only a 2.5 hour delay. Fortunately the rest of our long journey went smoothly - we jammily made it onto the (apparently 100% booked) bus to Manuel Antonio without a reservation, and arrived about 6pm - plenty of time to find somewhere to sleep and go our for dinner.

Miguel San Antonio and Quepos
We were blessed with beautiful weather for a nice change at Manuel Antonia National Park - it is a beautiful jungle right on the Pacific Coast. Being on the beach looking out over the rocky Pacific coast line made us both ache for our adopted second home in California. The jungle though is teeming with wildlife despite the hordes of tourists who blunder through here - we saw numerous sloths, white-faced monkeys, racoons and other birdlife.






Of course, the bad weather hadn't left us just yet - that night bad Pacific storms again caused severe flooding in the region - luckily we were on the first bus out the next day which was high enough to get through the roads, but we later heard that many villages were evacuated.